How to Prepare for a Singing Audition: Picking Your Audition Song

Do you have an audition for a band coming up?  Do you know how to pick a good song for your audition?

Usually, the band will give you some direction in terms of which songs they’d like to hear.  They might give you several songs of which you pick three, or they might give you a general genre or several artists to work within.

Assuming that you have some choice, here are three things to keep in mind while picking your audition songs.

You LOVE the song. 

This will do more than anything else to help you shine.  If you have a choice between a song that you think is more popular, more impressive, or whatever, and a song that you love more, PICK THE SONG YOU LOVE.  The easier it is for you to get into the feel of the song and express emotion, the more they will like you.

You know the song extremely well. 

And you have known it for a while.  Don’t learn a totally new song for an audition, if you can help it!  If you have to learn a new song for an audition, sing it in front of friends, family, and anyone else you can, as many times as possible before the audition. 

But whatever you do, DON’T go in and sing the song for the first time in your audition.  You don’t find out how well you really don’t know it… until it’s too late and you’ve blown your chance.

The song is neither too easy nor too hard for you to sing.

If in doubt, err on the side of too easy.  You’ll probably be a little nervous, and doing a song that you consider to be hard will not do anything good for your mental state.  Plus, if you try to hit some note that you don’t hit 100% of the time in practice, you might not hit it during the audition.

If, however, you have been told exactly which songs to sing, you should still come prepared with two or three other songs you sing really well.  They should be common, easy songs that most bands can play.  A standard blues song is a great backup to have.  And you should know which key you want to sing it in!

(c) 2011 Adrienne Osborn

Adrienne Osborn is a vocalist and performance coach based in Colorado.   For more free articles and tips, visit https://PerformanceHigh.net.